


Dreamcatchers and Demon Sheep

by MaryPSue



Series: Return, Rewind, Rewrite [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Family, Gen, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 10:51:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3324815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lionel Sterling never expected to have children. He definitely never expected one of them to turn out to be an impossibly ancient and powerful demon in disguise. But then again, that was far from the biggest challenge a single father of twins would have to face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreamcatchers and Demon Sheep

**Author's Note:**

> Another followup fic to [Return, Rewind, Rewrite](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2781551/chapters/6240008); this might not make much sense if you haven't read it. Mod chat talked about Dad Sterling having to get used to having a literal demon child. This happened.
> 
> This fic is part of the [Transcendence AU.](http://transcendence-au.tumblr.com)

Lionel Sterling had never thought he'd have children. It hadn't been part of his foolproof life plan to become a badass archivist/librarian who hunted down rare books in hidden places around the globe and maybe occasionally fought dinosaurs and dragons and reanimated Nazis to get them, just like his childhood hero, Montana Martinez. Or the foolproof life plan before that to become the lead guitarist in a world-famous filthy rich transcore revival band. But all that had been before Maya, before she'd waltzed into his life and his heart, before he'd seen the way she blossomed when she was playing with her nieces and the way her smile lit up her whole face when she talked about someday having a daughter of her own.

Looking into his daughter's incubator, her too-tiny face distorted both by the thick plastic between them and the miniature nasal cannula threaded under her tiny nose, Lionel willed himself to remember the look on Maya's face when she'd talked about children. Remember the joy that had lit her up from inside when the tiny plus sign had appeared in the window of the pregnancy test she'd held, her screams of delight and the warmth of her arms when she'd flung them around him. Remember her voice when she'd breathed into his ear, "You're going to be a father." 

Don't think about how Maya was never going to whisper anything to him again. Don't blame this poor child, struggling to cling to her own life, for taking Maya's.

Don't think about how he was never supposed to be doing this alone.

"May I hold her?" Lionel asked the attending nurse, and they smiled and showed him how to slip his hands into the gloves attached to the side of the incubator, how to touch his daughter without jostling her IVs or catheter out of position or doing any other harm to her already fragile form. Feeling the warmth of her undersized body through the thick rubber of the protective gloves, her rapid pulse and bird bones, so light and delicate that he feared the slightest wrong move could crush her completely, Lionel knew instantly that he couldn't blame this girl for Maya's death. She was perfect, she was everything, and he would do anything for her.

There must have been another incubator, another baby, his infant son, but his memories were hazy up until the hospital sent him home with both of the twins, safe and healthy and out of the woods. For twelve years, Lionel chalked it up to the effects of exhaustion and adrenaline and grief on his brain, not thinking much of it when he thought of it at all.

Then, as if by some kind of divine intervention, an old journal fell into his hands at a book auction he attended for the university, and everything changed.

...

It was a little easier to accept the impossible in Gravity Falls than in his own home, Lionel thought, watching his daughter hovering near the ceiling fan, laughing as she dumped glitter on top of the blades so that anyone turning on the fan would shower the entire room in sparkles. His son sat on the couch, seemingly absorbed in a mystery novel that was entirely too old for his apparent twelve years, but actually sneaking worried looks up at Belle every time she looked away.

"Lunch is ready," Lionel called, rubbing his hands dry on a dishtowel as he stepped into the living room.

"All right!" Belle spun a little too eagerly, and did an involuntary somersault in midair. "Whoa! Hey, Dipdop, how long did you say this was going to last?"

Dipper shut the book with a snap, giving up all pretense of reading. "Well, that jumbo chocolate bar bought you twenty minutes, so...you're stuck up there for another five."

Belle crossed her arms, slowly rotating until she was upside down. She stayed that way for a couple of seconds, swishing her hair back and forth and giggling, before she asked, "Could one of you two help me out here?"

"Welllll..." Dipper grinned up at Belle, and even though it was the same smile he always wore when they were teasing each other, it had never really struck Lionel before just how much of a trace of malice it held. "Got any more chocolate?"

"Dip _perrrr_!"

"Oh? Oh no, what's that? Oh, I'm running out of energy -"

" _No you're not you big jerk!_ "

_Stop being ridiculous_ , Lionel scolded himself. Taking a deep breath, he walked across the living room, reaching up and casually spinning his daughter until she was upright again. “Do you need a tow into the kitchen?” he asked Belle, who blew a loud raspberry, waving the question off, and then flailed helplessly as the gesture set her spinning again.

Lionel nodded to himself, reaching up and grabbing Belle’s ankle, stopping her rotation. “Dipper,” he said, turning to his son, a host of questions crowding to the forefront of his mind, first among them _I thought I told you no candy before lunch?_ and _so who was planning to clean up the glitter after your sister turned on the fan?_ and even just _what were you THINKING?_ , but he met the mild, vaguely curious gaze that his son – _Alcor the Dreambender_ – was giving him, and just shook his head instead. “Come on. I made sandwiches.”

...

It wasn’t even the things that changed that really threw Lionel for a loop. It was the way that so much stayed the same. 

It was a little disconcerting, for example, to come downstairs on a Saturday morning and find one of the most feared and fearsome demons known to humanity lying sprawled on the couch with a bowl of sugary cereal in his lap and his sister sitting beside him, watching cartoons. Or to sit down for a family dinner and hear the Lord of Nightmares, the Forgotten One, leveler of cities and devourer of souls, excitedly wondering when chess club would be starting up again (and then watch Belle smack him in the arm and call him a nerd).

Belle took it all in stride; apart from a seemingly insatiable curiosity about her brother’s powers and history, she acted almost like nothing had changed, like walking into the living room to find Dipper on the ceiling or having him disappear mid-sentence only to reappear several minutes to hours later, grumbling about cultists, was just how things had always been. Lionel wished he weren’t surprised that his daughter didn’t seem fazed when Dipper’s disguise faltered, giving them a glimpse of what he really was behind the sweet, if awkward, kid they knew. 

Lionel himself was having a little more trouble reconciling the fact that his son, who he had on more than one occasion caught singing girly pop songs into the mirror and would probably die on the spot if that fact came to light, was one of the same creatures that Lionel had been taught from childhood to avoid at all costs. He’d get there eventually, he knew – after all, discovering one of your children was a demon in disguise was far from the biggest challenge a single parent of twins had to face – but…it was taking some time to adjust.

Things like this didn’t exactly make it easier, either.

“Ohmygosh Dipper they’re so _cuuuuuute_! Do they have names? I’m gonna give them names!”

“Yeah, that one’s – Belle, put the demon lamb down.”

“But he’s so fluffy and scaly and – ow! Kinda prickly, too, aren’t you, mister? I think I’ll call you Spike!”

"Yeahhhh, his name is -" Dipper's voice suddenly dropped, one hand coming up to awkwardly rub the back of his neck as he mumbled something that sounded like it might have been "Zondor the Destructor". 

"Hmmm, nope. This little guy is Spike now." Belle held up the five-eyed lamb with the forked tongue and three long, scaly, spiny tails at arm's length, and squinched up her nose in a grin that Lionel recognised from one too many monstrous 'pets' dragged home behind her. "Who's a spiky little demon sheeplet? You are!"

Perched on top of the china cabinet, Waffles the teacup griffin flared his tiny wings and shrieked territorially at the flood of fluffy, pristine white wool and flashing red eyes and occasional malformed and eldritch limbs that filled the living room. And the kitchen. And spilled over into the entranceway.

“Belle, what on earth have you adopted this time?” Lionel asked, shuffling carefully through the herd. Red eyes turned to follow him as he went, and he got the uncomfortable feeling that he was being sized up as a threat or a possible meal.

“They’re um. Not Belle’s,” Dipper said, with a wide and…well, _sheepish_ grin. “They’re the Flock.” His voice dropped again as he added, “My familiars.”

Lionel met his eyes, taking in the apologetic expression on Dipper’s face, and then looking around in disbelief at the fluffy white creatures packed into every corner of his home. “Is this…are they…” he started, trying to make the question into a coherent sentence, and finally gave up. “Are they staying with us?” He ignored the niggling part of his mind that kept trying to persuade him to ask _what do they eat?_

“Oh, no,” Dipper answered hurriedly, ignoring Belle’s ‘aww!’ of protest. “No, they just came to check the place out. They’ll be leaving now,” he said pointedly, with a glare at one of the sheep, reaching over and taking Spike from Belle.

The sheep Dipper had looked at opened its mouth, a long, jagged gash filled with fangs, letting out a waft of stinking breath, and said, W E  H A V E  N O T  B E E N  S A T I S F I E D. Its voice was like a bucket of icewater poured over Lionel’s brain, shocking and terrible and wyrd in a way that deserved the ‘y’. It was definitely not the kind of voice Lionel would have ever expected to hear coming from a sheep. H A V E  Y O U  R E T U R N E D  A S  O U R  M A S T E R?

Dipper didn’t seem phased at all, answering the sheep with an annoyed, “Yeah, yeah, but part-time. Not during school hours. And not after nine o’clock on weeknights.”

T H E S E  A R E  N O T  I D E A L  C O N D I T I O N S.

Dipper crossed his arms. “Hey, who’s the master here?”

The sheep gave a huffing sigh that filled the air with the stench of rotting meat and moldering, damp, enclosed spaces. V E R Y  W E L L. W E  S H A L L  H E R A L D  T H E  R E T U R N  O F  T H E  D R E A M B E N D E R.

The sheep began to smear oddly, blurring and blending into one another like a sleeve dragged through wet paint. In seconds, they had all vanished. 

“Remember, evenings and weekends only!” Dipper called after them.

“Are they likely to be back?” Lionel asked, weakly, sitting heavily in the nearest kitchen chair.

“Uh, yeah, they’ll probably be in and out. Don’t worry, you’ll barely notice them!” Dipper gave him a wide smile that was reassuring to no one.

Surprisingly, Lionel really didn’t notice the sheep coming and going. Once or twice he peeked into Dipper and Belle’s shared room and saw Dipper deep in conversation with a ball of fluffy wool with too many heads and raptor-clawed limbs or Belle gleefully tying bows to Spike’s spikes while the lamb thrashed around desperately trying to pull itself free, but that was all. The Flock never overtook the first floor again, and they were surprisingly quiet and well-behaved.

Lionel wished he could say as much for some of the other creatures that started showing up looking for his son. But that was a whole other story.

…

When the twins had been about five or six years old, Dipper had stopped sleeping.

At first, Lionel had thought it was simply because his son was distracted; he’d often catch Dipper up late playing with a puzzle game or reading a book, seeming to have just lost track of time. Then he’d started to suspect it was out of stubbornness, resistance against parental authority in the form of bedtime. But after he'd started strictly enforcing bedtime, things didn't get better. In fact, they got a whole lot worse, very fast.

The first sign that something was very wrong came when Lionel came in one morning to wake the twins up for school and found Belle fast asleep on a bare bed and Dipper sitting bolt upright on his bed, surrounded by a nest of Belle's stuffed animals and extra blankets, staring at the opposite wall with a heavy, blank stare that seemed to say he'd been doing this for a long time. Lionel had to call his name a few times before Dipper blinked, slowly, and turned to look at him. When Lionel asked whether he'd slept, Dipper just blinked first one eye, then the other, and gave a yawn that seemed too big for his tiny body.

It turned into a pattern. Every morning, Dipper was surrounded by Belle's stuffed toys and looked more exhausted than he had the night before. He sleepwalked through the day, growing more clumsy and forgetful and joyless with every passing day. Lionel asked, but Dipper wouldn't - or couldn't - explain what was wrong, and Belle only said, "My animals aren't keeping the bads away."

Then the screaming started.

The first night, Lionel was jolted awake by a panicked, bloodcurdling shriek from down the hall, in the direction of the twins' room. He'd rolled out of bed before he was even fully awake, hardly feeling the cold floor under his bare feet as he ran the few feet from his room to the twins' door. Those few feet had never felt so long.

Lionel threw open the door to find his son thrashing and screaming on his bed, waving his arms as thought beset by invisible assailants, Belle with her fingers in her ears and tears in her eyes on the floor beside his bed. He lost no time in shaking Dipper awake, the boy's screams dying down gradually as he slowly woke up and realised where he was. He was shivering when Lionel pulled him up onto his lap and into a hug, rocking gently back and forth. Belle scrambled up beside them, and Lionel wrapped an arm around her as well, drawing her close against his side.

"I - I tried to help," Belle sobbed, and the words stabbed Lionel to the heart. He'd been _annoyed_ with Dipper for staying up and wearing himself out, and the whole time, his son had been suffering some kind of night terrors. And his daughter had been taking it onto herself to try to protect him as best a six-year-old could. Alone.

"You're such a thoughtful sister," Lionel whispered to her, squeezing her a little tighter. "I think this is going to take a little more than stuffed animal protection to take care of, though."

It took nearly an hour to get the twins back to sleep. After another hour had passed, Lionel realised that there was no way he was going to fall back asleep, and booted up his tablet, opening a new search for sleep specialists in the area.

They ended up taking Dipper to five different specialists, each with less result than the last, before the fifth specialist suggested 'something a little unorthodox'. "It might seem anachronistic, now that you can program a MagiCore to project just about any charm you need, but...have you tried a dreamcatcher?" When Lionel admitted that they hadn't, the specialist had nodded and pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. "There's a woman two towns over who makes the best, most effective dreamcatchers I've ever used. I recommend her to all my clients. Why don't you give that a shot."

They'd driven out that very day. Dipper had fallen asleep in the car and woken up shouting something about blood and candles and walking hands. 

The woman they’d come to see had greeted them with a smile and a spiel about the beauty of traditional dreamcatchers, only to take one look at Dipper’s face, drop the smile and screech to a halt mid-speech, and disappear behind the counter. For a moment, Lionel was terrified that she’d seen something she didn’t like, that she wasn’t going to help them, before she emerged again carrying the largest, most elaborate dreamcatcher Lionel had ever seen, with an honest-to-goodness ram’s skull affixed to the top. It practically crackled with power.

He probably paid too much for it, but that night, after he hung it at the head of Dipper’s bed, all three of the Sterlings slept through the night for the first time in too long.

The dreamcatcher quickly turned into a fixture of the twins’ room, and then faded, like most familiar things do, from Lionel’s mind. In fact, he didn’t think of it again until the day after the family returned from Gravity Falls.

He was sitting in the kitchen sipping a cup of coffee when Belle tore down the stairs, her eyes sparkling and a smile on her face that said she was barely holding back laughter. “Dad, come upstairs quick, you have _got_ to see this.”

Lionel tried to imagine what could possibly have amused Belle so much as he climbed the stairs behind her. Nothing he came up with, however, could have prepared him for the spectacle that greeted him when he pushed open the door to the twins’ room. 

Dipper was lying in a tangle of awkwardly-bent limbs and shimmering golden cord on top of his bed, thoroughly enmeshed in the dreamcatcher. It looked like it must have fallen off the wall in the night and - well, Lionel wasn't sure how exactly it could have caught Dipper up quite so thoroughly or in such a complicated way without magic being involved somehow.

"Okay, Belle, don't you have enough pictures already?" Dipper complained, as Belle grabbed her camera from the bedside table and gleefully snapped a few shots.

"Of course not, brother dear!"

Dipper turned pleading eyes on Lionel. "Would you please help me out of this?"

"I have no idea how I'd even start," Lionel admitted, trying to follow the strands of the dreamcatcher with his eyes and failing. Some of them seemed to be passing _through_ Dipper, which was probably not physically possible. 

Dipper managed to shake his head slightly. "Just grab the frame and pull, it'll come away."

"How did you end up like this in the first place?" Lionel asked, ignoring Belle's complaints that he was ruining her shot as he reached out and grabbed the dreamcatcher's frame.

Dipper went bright red and mumbled something Lionel didn't quite catch.

"Sorry, what was that?"

Lionel pulled the dreamcatcher away with a hard tug, the cords snapping back into place. Dipper stretched with a relieved sigh. He shot an annoyed look over at Belle, before saying, "Technically, I'm a dream demon. Beeeeelllllle, it's not funny!"

Belle stopped snickering for only long enough to say, "You get stuck in dreamcatchers! You're right, that's not funny, that's hilarious!"

Dipper scowled in her direction, but Lionel didn't miss the way the corner of his mouth threatened to twitch up into a smile.

"So I should get rid of this?" Lionel asked, holding up the dreamcatcher, and Belle snorted with laughter.

"You could sell it and get Dipper to approve it! 'Works on 100% of dorky dream demons'." She giggled, covering her mouth with one hand.

"Are you sure you'll be all right without it?" Lionel asked Dipper, and Belle shot him a glance that made it clear that, right at that exact moment in time, he was doing the opposite of helping. Too late, it occurred to him that she’d probably been teasing Dipper about how silly he looked to keep exactly that realization at bay.

Dipper looked up at the dreamcatcher, and then over at the glitter art covering the walls on Belle's side of the room. "...Yeah. The nightmares won't be back." He took a deep breath, balling his hands in the sheets on his bed. "I think - I'm pretty sure now that all they were in the first place were memories trying to come back."

Lionel nodded, mechanically, remembering the terror and the haunted looks in six-year-old Dipper's eyes, the things Dipper had screamed about in the small hours of the night, and trying very hard not to let any of the tumult of emotions that had overtaken him show on his face. 

"All right, I'll get rid of it," he said, evenly, rising to his feet. He managed to make it across the room and stopped in the doorway, looking back and realising just how small Dipper looked, how young.

_Blood and hands and candles._

_All they were in the first place were memories trying to come back._

Lionel shook his head, trying to shake the thought off with it, and opened the door, slipping through and out of the room.

...

"Why the long face?"

Lionel looked up from the preserving case of the manuscript he was cataloguing to find his assistant librarian watching him with one eyebrow raised in an expression halfway between confusion and concern. "Sorry, Mina, I wasn't listening."

"You haven't been all week." Mina slid shut the glass case behind her. "You've been distracted. What gives?"

"I'm not distracted," Lionel argued, feeling heat rise to his cheeks. Mina looked pointedly down at the manuscript case in his hand, and Lionel glanced down to see that the case he'd picked up had a different name written on the spine than the manuscript in front of him. "Okay, maybe I'm a little distracted."

Mina gave him a knowing smile, leaning her chin on one hand and resting her elbow on the desk. "Did you meet someone?"

"What? No, no," Lionel protested, the heat in his face growing more intense. "I just - the twins started seventh grade this week, and it's been rough on all of us."

Understanding dawned in Mina's eyes, her lips parting slightly in a faint 'ah'. Lionel nodded, setting down the case in his hand and looking around for the case that belonged with the manuscript in front of him. "Is that a good enough excuse to be distracted?"

Mina gave a little hum. "Honestly? I don't think you have anything to worry about."

"That's easy for you to say, you're not a parent," Lionel responded automatically. He'd had the stupid case here a minute ago, it couldn't have vanished this quickly.

"And hopefully never will be!" Mina agreed, with a faintly nasal laugh. "But I remember seventh grade. Sure, it's scary, and everything's changing. But from what you've told me, I think those kids will be able to handle it just fine."

Lionel nodded slowly, remembering how Belle had come home from the first day and locked herself in her bedroom, not coming out until the next morning and refusing to explain what was wrong. How Dipper had forced a smile and tried to act like he hadn't noticed anything strange, how Lionel had caught him glaring into space when he thought Lionel wasn't looking. "I'm sure," he said, sounding unconvincing even to his own ears.

They hadn't told him what was wrong. That, more than anything, was what he couldn't get over. It wasn't like the twins had never kept anything from him before, of course. But it had only been the three of them for so long that Lionel wasn't used to them closing him out of their problems. Whatever this was, it looked serious, and yet neither Dipper nor Belle would even admit that anything was _wrong_.

He'd known this was coming, but somehow he still hadn't seen it until it had already overtaken him. They were already pulling away from him. Before he knew it, they'd be gone.

"Hey." The sound of Mina's voice was startling. Lionel had almost forgotten she was there. He looked up, and she gave him a reassuring smile, handing him the case he'd been looking for. "They'll be all right. Know how I know?"

Lionel shook his head.

Mina grinned. "Because I know the man who raised them."

...

The ride home from the high school was filled with brittle silence. More than once, Lionel heard Belle draw in a breath, no doubt about to launch into a rambling justification of their actions, but she always fell silent again before saying a word. Once, he glanced back in the rearview mirror, and saw Dipper silence his sister with a worried look and a half-shake of his head. Through his anger, Lionel found that he was grateful. He was already having enough trouble concentrating on the road through the roar of blood pounding in his ears, and he was clutching the steering wheel so tightly that he was a little afraid pieces of it were going to start crumbling away in his white-knuckled hands.

They'd barely made it in the front door before it became too much to hold in.

"What were you two _thinking_? Fighting in school? I am so disappointed in both of you!"

Dipper's shoulders caved inward, his gaze turning towards his toes, but Belle's face flushed, and she said hotly, "What, what were we supposed to do?"

"You could have gone to the principal! You could have come to _me."_

Belle snorted. "Dad, we did talk to the principal. It was a total joke. Half those kids have parents on the school board."

"That doesn't mean you beat the kids up behind the school!"

"Why not? That's what they were going to do to Dipper!"

Lionel, who had been on the verge of launching into a lecture on how violence solved nothing and only caused more violence, stopped cold, the furious energy that had been driving him replaced by a sudden hollow chill. He looked over at his son, who had stuffed both hands into the pockets of his brand new blazer and was doing his best impersonation of a lamppost - silent and immobile. "Is this true?"

Dipper shrugged without looking up.

"Dad, you know I'm not a bully," Belle said, and the anger in her voice had cooled some, joined by pleading. "I wouldn't have been fighting in the first place if they hadn't started it -"

"I told you you didn't _have_  to!" Dipper finally exploded, pulling his hands from his pockets to gesture widely, and Lionel noticed a faint echo to his words before his voice cracked and wavered. "I was taking care of it, okay?"

"Don't think I don't know how you were 'taking care of it', young man," Lionel said, his voice faltering slightly as Dipper turned to glare at him, but he pushed onwards. "The principal might only know that Belle got in a fight, but I know your pets when I see them - or don't see them, as the case may be. Setting demon sheep on people does _not_  solve your problems, it only creates more."

"Yeah, I figured that one out myself," Dipper muttered, turning his gaze away again. "It's just - it's all my fault that this happened in the first place. I could have _handled_  it. You didn't have to go getting yourself involved!" he snapped at Belle.

"So, what, I'm not supposed to care about what happens to my twin brother?" Belle looked like she was near tears, her voice growing thick even as it rose in pitch. "Now you've got all kinds of shiny cool powers, you don't need me to have your back anymore?"

"What? No! But you didn't have to go getting yourself in trouble!"

"Are you freaking kidding me? Did you really think I was just going to let some doughhead go around telling the whole school that my brother's preter trash who should've been smothered at birth?"

"Belle!" Lionel said sharply, as Dipper visibly flinched at her words. Belle turned wide, pleading eyes on her father, but he managed to stay resolved even in the face of her infamous puppy dog eyes. "I won't have you two fighting in school. End of discussion. You will find another way to deal with your problems, one that doesn't involve violence or petty revenge - and yes, that includes curses. I will do anything in my power to help you, but you have to _tell_  me when something's wrong." He stopped, ignoring the noises of protest from both twins, and took a deep breath in through his nose and out his mouth.

"Faybelle, you are grounded for two weeks."

Belle's mouth dropped open, but surprisingly, she didn't say anything. Instead, she shrugged off her backpack and threw it into the closet with a bang, her eyes locked on her father's in a furious glare the entire time, and then turned and ran up the stairs, feet pounding against each step like it had delivered her a personal insult.

"And Dipper -" Lionel started, turning to his son, and stopped cold. Dipper had looked up and was watching him. And even though Dipper looked exactly the same as he had only minutes before when they'd walked in the door, there was something in that watchful look, something in the way he held himself and his cool observation, that made Lionel feel like a helpless thing pinned to a dissection table, watching something vast and alien and inscrutable staring back down at him, holding his life almost literally in the palm of its hand.

Lionel Sterling would never make the mistake of calling the creature before him in that instant his son.

Then he blinked, and the spell broke, and it was only Dipper looking back at him again. But Lionel found he couldn't so easily shake off the reminder that the boy in front of him was something else entirely, something old and strange and very, very powerful.

"...please don't sic the sheep on people outside of Alcor business," Lionel managed, lamely. It felt like his tongue was trying to curl in on itself and hide in the safety of his mouth.

Dipper's eyebrows furrowed into a frown, but Lionel had already brushed past him, starting down the hall towards the kitchen with his heart pounding like he'd just run a marathon.

...

It had been about a week before school let out, a week before the fateful auction that brought the journal into his life, that Lionel had walked into the upstairs bathroom looking for his razor and found his son carefully inspecting a single fair hair curling from his chin in the mirror.

“Did you take my razor?” Lionel asked, and Dipper turned bright red and spun around, nearly falling over into the sink.

“What? No, why would I have seen your razor? Hah, it’s not like I need to shave yet, or…anything.” He cleared his throat, straightening up. “Maybe Belle borrowed it for some crafting thing?”

Belle had not borrowed it for some crafting thing. The next time Lionel walked into the ensuite bathroom, though, his razor was sitting innocently beside the sink, in what he knew for a fact was the first place he’d looked when he’d noticed it was missing.

He sighed, and made a mental note to pick up a pack of disposable razors next time he went shopping. And then stopped, and then went and wrote down ‘disposable razors’ on the shopping list, because otherwise he was sure to forget.

He left the pack of razors and a can of shaving cream on Dipper’s bed, but was entirely unsurprised when, two days later, Belle came down to breakfast with brightly-coloured bandaids dotting her legs, and Dipper still examined that single fair hair on his chin in every reflective surface he passed, smiling to himself when he thought no one was looking.

Lionel wasn’t surprised. Of course he knew that his children were getting older, were growing up. What did surprise him was how, even though he was prepared, even though he was proud as hell, even as he turned over in his head just how he was going to give Belle a talk about facts he wasn’t one hundred percent certain of himself, he wasn’t ready. Looking back staggered him, looking forward, even more so. How had twelve years already passed since he was able to hold Belle in one hand? How were the twins closer to eighteen years old than two? How had time run away with them, and how had Lionel failed to notice it passing? 

Lionel Sterling stood in the middle of his ensuite bathroom, looking down at the plain razor in his hand, suddenly missing his wife so strongly he could taste it, bitter and salt on the back of his tongue. Maya should have been here to see the twins growing up, to celebrate their successes and be staggered by the passage of time right along with him. The twins shouldn’t be slipping through his fingers so quickly, shouldn’t be so eager to throw themselves into adulthood. Everything was changing, and he was already losing them, and it was too soon, much, much too soon…

When the twins found him sobbing in the bathroom, staring at his razor, Lionel made up some story about getting shaving cream in a cut, a story that fell flat when he scooped them up in a hug that was a little too tight and held on for a little too long.

...

When the journal had first appeared on the auction block, Lionel would like to say that he felt some kind of electric current, some kind of heightened sense of what it was going to mean for his family and how it was about to change his life forever. The truth was, he hadn't. That didn't come until later, when he was flipping through it with freshly-washed hands in a climate-controlled room in the basement special collections library, and found photographs of his son in its ancient, brittle pages. But he had felt _something_  when he'd bid on the journal, something that he'd never admit had been the driving force behind acquiring something so unlike the school's usual collections. 

He'd felt, for just a moment, like Montana Martinez.

Lionel was ten years old when the first Montana Martinez movie came out. Like every other kid on the block and in his grade and, it seemed, in the entire world, he pestered his mother until she took him to see it.

He'd sat in the cool dark of the theatre, eyes wide, as an adventure the likes of which he'd never even imagined unfolded on the screen. Montana Martinez was a tough guy, sure, with a cool hat and a bullwhip and a khaki shirt open nearly to the navel. But he was also a smart guy, a research librarian and archivist who used logic and information to work out a series of ancient clues and riddles hidden in an old book that would lead him to a fantastical treasure. It was the first time that Lionel had ever seen anyone like himself, someone who was more interested in books than sports and who preferred thinking problems through before hitting them with heavy objects, having the kind of adventure the action heroes got to have. He was enamoured.

(For his birthday that year, his aunt gave him a biography of Dipper Pines, the Transcendence-era explorer and investigator whose real-life adventures had very loosely inspired the character of Montana Martinez. The book was a little old for Lionel, too densely written with a few too many academic references and not enough explosions, but he powered gamely through anyway. He was devastated to learn of Dipper's death at only age twelve, and was so upset that he put the whole thing largely out of his mind until, so many years later, it came time to choose a name for his infant son.)

Naturally, as soon as the twins turned ten, Lionel was eager to share his childhood memories with them. Belle got bored about five minutes in, pulling out her pony toys halfway through the movie and tuning out on the thrilling sequence of Montana solving the puzzle map, but Dipper was entranced. He sat in wide-eyed silence through _Plunderers of the Misplaced Houseboat_  and, as soon as the credits started rolling, turned those wide eyes on Lionel and asked, "Is there more?"

The movies had been such a large part of Lionel's life for so long that by now, they had a whole tangle of complicated emotions and memories, both happy and sad, tied up with them in his mind. He'd seen the films so many times (often with Dipper alongside him) that he could turn the sound off on one and quote the dialogue by heart.

Or identify one playing in another room by just the sound of a shout and an explosion.

Lionel stepped into the living room at the sound of _Cathedral of Predestination,_  Dipper's favourite of the original trilogy. He was expecting to find Dipper curled up on the couch, watching the movie. He wasn't expecting to find the room apparently empty, the television blaring into the silent dark. There was a strange heaviness in the air, though, that made Lionel think that perhaps the room wasn't quite as deserted as it seemed.

He walked tentatively further in, ignoring the screams from the television set and the way the air seemed to grow thicker and darker as he approached the couch. Lionel chose the end of the couch that Dipper usually didn't take, settling down and turning his attention to the TV set.

After about ten minutes of an extended chase scene through the toppling shelves of the resurrected Library of Alexandria, Lionel glanced over to his left to see Dipper - or not Dipper, exactly, but Alcor, his flaring golden eyes fixed on the movie playing out on the screen, knees curled up against his chest and both wings and arms wrapped around himself.

Despite the thick, heavy gloom filling the room, Lionel couldn't help but smile. He didn't say anything, though, looking back towards the movie and waiting for Dipper to make the first move.

Montana Martinez was gazing deep into the startlingly purple eyes of the priestess he'd rescued from reanimated cyborg Nazis as the Library of Alexandria 2.0 exploded behind them when Dipper finally said, "You̷ ̛d͞idn't ͡gro̵u̢n͘d̨ me͘.̨"

Lionel tried to suppress the shiver that scurried down his spine at the sound of the heavy demonic resonance filling Dipper's voice. "I didn't." He watched Montana lean in for a kiss, only for the priestess to suddenly wither into a shriveled mummy and collapse into dust in his arms. "I don't want to punish you for being bullied -"

Dipper cut him off with a hollow laugh. "I can see your aura, you know. I actually have to try to _not_ read your emotions." On the screen, Montana looked soulfully into the distance, towards the rising sun. "It's okay. You can admit it. I know you're scared." Dipper tucked his knees a little closer to his chest as the music swelled, his voice quiet enough that the theme song nearly drowned it out. "I know you're scared of me."

"That's not -" Lionel started to protest, weakly, and then sighed, leaning forward and clasping his hands in front of him, resting his elbows on his knees. "No, that's not fair. I won't lie to you. I'm scared."

“T̛h̸ou͘g͜h͝t ̛s̴o̷,̵” Dipper said softly, and the credits flickered off the screen, replaced by static.

"I'm sorry," Lionel said, after a long moment of silence broken only by the white-noise hiss of the staticky screen. "I just wanted to be the best dad I could be for you two, and I'm making a real mess of it."

Dipper didn't say anything in response.

"I have no idea what I'm doing, and it scares me shitless." Lionel clasped and unclasped his hands, worrying the plain gold band around the ring finger on his left hand. Maya would have known how to handle this. Or more likely, she wouldn't. But she'd have faced the challenge with a smile and a terrible joke, and she'd never, _ever_ have let her own fears get in the way of being a good parent to her children. "But I shouldn't be taking that out on you."

"It's álĺ ̨rig̴h̶t̛," Dipper said, still in that same quiet, dull tone. "Of course you're freaked out. You tried your hardest. But I'm a d̷͟e̛m̷̸òn͜, after all."

Lionel looked over at him for the first time since the TV had cut out. The being huddled against the armrest on the other end of the couch was enfolded by vast, void-black wings, it was true, double rows of fangs flashing when he grimaced, his eyes dark and inhuman with an ancient, ineffable intelligence in their gaze. The very fabric of reality seemed to warp just slightly around him, like a heat shimmer, making him look too real and not real at all.

But his face still had traces of baby fat and the finely-tailored black suit he wore couldn't hide the noodly limbs of someone just edging onto the cusp of puberty and, really, the miserable look on his face said it all.

If Maya were here, Lionel knew suddenly, she'd kick his ass for putting that expression on the face of his own child. He'd been so busy looking for the demon in Dipper that he hadn't even seen Dipper in the demon.

"Whatever else you might be, you're still my son," Lionel said, raising his voice over the static hiss. Dipper looked up, startled, and the smile that Lionel offered felt easy and sincere. "And...you're grounded."

Dipper stared at him in disbelief for a long moment, and then, a shaky smile broke across his face. Lionel held out both arms, and Dipper sniffed loudly, scooching across the couch to curl up against his father's side. Lionel pulled his son into a tight hug, and was entirely unsurprised when a warm, deceptively strong pair of wings wrapped around them both.

Lionel wasn't certain how long they stayed like that before he finally sighed and moved to pull away. "I should go talk to Belle, make sure she's all right. And we should all have a talk about what you two want to do about school." Dipper reluctantly drew his wings back, sitting up so that Lionel could lever himself off the couch. "But once we're done, do you want to watch _The Final Door-To-Door Evangelism_?"

Dipper sniffled again, but he was smiling as he tucked his wings away behind him. "Actually, I only caught the last fifteen minutes of _Cathedral of Predestination_ and I was...a little distracted." His grin turned mischievous, a glint of fang showing as he asked, "How about we marathon all three from the beginning?"

...

A few days after their return from Gravity Falls, Lionel Sterling had been startled awake in the middle of the night, breathing hard, his heart thudding like a jackhammer in his chest, to see a pair of glowing golden eyes staring at him from out of the blackness at the foot of the bed.

His panicked reaction was cut short when his son's voice, laden with a faint tinny echo, said, "It's okay, it's just me! I was just, um, I ate your nightmare."

“Run that by me again,” Lionel said, muzzily, trying to remember where and who he was and what was happening and also not to look at the clock, because then he’d only be pissed off on top of startled, confused and exhausted.

“Um,” Dipper said, from the end of the bed, the golden glow from his eyes making it easy to read his sheepish expression even in the grainy dark of the small hours of the morning. “You, uh, you were having a really awful nightmare. So I ate it.” The uncertain smile that Dipper flashed in Lionel’s direction looked a little sharper-toothed than usual. “That…that was okay, right? Sorry, I didn’t ask, I didn’t want to wake you up, but I guess I did anyway.”

“Dipper,” Lionel sighed, giving in at last and glancing over at the clock. Somehow, he was totally unsurprised to see _3:26_ glowing from it in bold red numerals. 

It took him a moment to realise that he wasn’t upset. Sure, it had been terrifying when his dream had suddenly started to disintegrate into blank nothingness around him, but what had come before must have been worse. He didn’t remember much about its content, other than darkness and the suffocating press of the shadowy ideas of trees all around him. But the feeling that had accompanied the nightmare was still there, vivid and sick and hollow, the horrible certainty of something important slipping through his grasp, something important lost, perhaps forever. 

He certainly wasn’t going to complain about Dipper shortening that particular experience.

“Come here,” Lionel said, sitting up.

Dipper hesitated a moment, glancing to his left as he rubbed nervously at his arm. “Actually, there’s school tomorrow, I should probably just go back to -”

“ _Dipper_.” Lionel stopped cold at the way his son hunched his shoulders forward, the guilty expression on his face. “I’m not mad,” he added, realization striking him. “Thank you for doing that.” He held out both arms wide.

Dipper hesitated for a moment longer, before padding up to the head of the bed. The hug he gave Lionel was hesitant at first, but quickly grew warm and tight, and he only broke away when the door swung open and Belle stepped in.

"Dipper?" she whisper-called into the darkened room, a note of barely-restrained panic in her voice. "Are you in here, bro?"

"Yeah, over here," Dipper said, and Belle darted across the room with surprising speed for someone so obviously exhausted, flinging herself at her brother and throwing both arms around his neck. 

"You big _jerk_! I woke up and you were just gone! I thought maybe somebody'd snatched you again or you'd decided we were too boring for you or something and -"

"Belle, whoa, it's okay," Dipper interrupted, and Belle shook her head, squeezing him a little tighter.

"Don't scare me like that," she whispered, and Lionel sighed. Really, the twins were getting a little old for this, but...Gravity Falls had changed things. They were all a little shaken up. And honestly, he knew he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep either without knowing where both of them were, and that they were safe.

So he scooted over in the queen-sized bed that was usually empty save for himself, pulling back the covers. "Come on, you two. I know it's not a thunderstorm, but I think we've all had enough scares for one night."

It was probably telling that neither Dipper nor Belle protested that they were too grown up or that running to Dad in the middle of the night when you got scared was for little kids. They just shot in under the covers, and, with a minimum of kicking and arguing over blankets, curled up close to Lionel and each other. 

Before long, the only sounds in the room were two sets of quiet, even breathing. They were joined by a purr as Waffles padded into the room and hopped up on the end of the bed, a warm weight on Lionel's feet.

Ordinarily, he'd have gotten up to put the teacup griffin down off the bed. But tonight, Lionel only leaned over to place a soft kiss on the foreheads of each of his children. They both looked uncharacteristically peaceful as they slept, Belle with her arms already splayed out across Dipper and off the edge of the bed and her mouth hanging open, Dipper with his hand loosely holding the one she'd draped over him and smiling faintly.

Yes, maybe they were getting a little too old for this. And yes, soon enough they'd be growing up, growing away, starting out on their own into the world with barely a glance behind them.

But for right now, they were here, and Lionel was going to treasure them for as long as he got to keep them.

Lionel shuffled down under the covers, and, with his family surrounding him, let himself drift off to sleep with a smile on his face.


End file.
